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Week 5: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

My original plan was to give myself at least one week’s break before reading the next book in any series, like The Hunger Games and Millennium trilogies. This week, I decided I didn’t want to wait any longer, so to hell with it, and finished up Millennium.

I was not disappointed. Much of the loose ends in Lisbeth’s backstory were tied up, and I got a strong sense of satisfaction while watching the people who gave her so much hell get taken down for good. I was left wondering whatever came of Camilla, who was mentioned so many times throughout all three books but never showed up in person. Still, it makes some kind of sense for her to stay in the background if she wasn’t so important to the story as a whole. Considering what a private person Lisbeth is in the first place, why should we know every little detail about her life?

One thing that did bother me is similar to what bothered me about Fire. I mentioned in my last post that Lisbeth has a strange ability to make the average stuffed shirt crazy about her. Mikael Blomkvist has this same ability with women, to the point where a police officer who worked with him for about one month was already falling in love with him. In Dragon, we saw one of the Vanger clan fall for him after a brief affair. Even Lisbeth discovered that she had feelings for him, and grew extremely bitter when she discovered that they would never be returned. Erika even lampshaded this phenomenon toward the end of Hornet. It comes off as more of an informed ability, as while I consider Mikael to be a likable character, I couldn’t see myself falling for him.

This is still a great ending to the trilogy. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that the story is done.